What do you wear on or in your ears when you go shooting? Listen up: out of the 3,500 of you who responded to our lockdown kit survey in the spring, 435 completed the survey on hearing protection. It’s something we have been pushing on Fieldsports Channel, especially with Roy Lupton going so deaf.
And you rightly pick us up when we show people shooting without hearing protection. So what do you, the Fieldsports Channel viewers wear?
One of the clear winners is headphones, which are still significantly more popular than in-ear protection. They may make you look like Teletubbies when you are out shooting, but the great majority of shooters use cans these days.
Here are the big winners. In the in-ear category, CENS dominates with 8% of the total market. Its biggest seller, the ProFlex is, however, outsold by – in third place – the MSA Sordin Supreme Pro-X. And in second place, the Honeywell Howard Leight Impact Sport. First place by several lengths goes to the 3M Peltor SportTac, with 3M Peltor owning 36% of the entire Fieldsports Channel viewer market. Well done those Swedes.
Let’s look at some of the areas where you praise your plugs.
For comfort, you prefer CENS over all other manufacturers, the in-ear solution and maker of the popular Proflex, which is the biggest selling in-ear hearing protection among Fieldsports Channel viewers.
How well does your hearing protection work? Here, the winner is the range from MSA Sordin.
Hearing protection is expensive, so which company offers the best value-for-money in the opinion of our viewers? They choose the orange crinkly earplugs from Sonic.
And customer service? For those who have had to send back their hearing protection and get them fixed, the winner is UK mail-order company and distributor Napier, maker of the Pro 9 and Pro 10 headsets.
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